


Denial

by ignitesthestars



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Love/Hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3439889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't love her, in moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Denial

He doesn’t love her when she idolises him.

The Darkling is used to being more than human. He has sat above Grisha and _otkazat’sya_ alike for centuries, and while she may be the key to his plans, the faintly stunned way her gaze trips after him is nothing more than a tool.

A tool that he takes some small pleasure in using, yes. But there is no shame in finding joy in your work.

He doesn’t love her when she defies him. The urge to bind her to his side is sudden and violent, but the Darkling has never appreciated his pawns acting without his direction. She will learn, as they all do in the end.

And she will be happy to have done so.

He doesn’t love her when he has her chained, when he has forced her to return to him. But he doesn’t find the satisfaction that he had expected in this, either. She is with him and he owns her, but her inability to realise that she belongs to him (with him) is—

A frustration.

The Darkling has never taken well to frustration.

He doesn’t love her when he comes to her in his bed, when he stands in the shadows and watches her spread out on his sheets, when he thinks about winding his hands in her hair until the skin pulls tight and she begs him to stop and he kisses her instead (with his own face).

Even in his thoughts, she fights him, and he hates that. He doesn’t love her as she digs her way under his skin, inch by inch. Oblivious at first, but as time passes there is a precision to actions, until she doesn’t dig but slices instead, a thousand cuts that succeed in taking his breath away, however briefly.

She can pretend her innocence for her tracker, her reluctance for her prince, but the Darkling feels her hands on his soul when she rips them apart together, and knows the depths of her. Knows the hungry thing inside her. Knows that he might have been the one to awaken it, but that he is not the one who put it there. Knows as she winds them closer and closer together, until their very essence mingles, that this is what it is to have an equal.

He doesn’t love her then, either.

She appears in his throne room and he despises her even as he requires her presence. Hates that the very power he had used to work himself into her is now being used against him, hates that he is _glad_ for it. Hates that where he had once been pleased with the idea of a Sun Summoner under his control to pass the centuries with, he can no longer envision a future without Alina Starkov at his side.

He doesn’t—

He doesn’t. Not when he might make a monster of her (as though she hasn’t already made a monster of herself), not when he makes a monster of her prince. Not when his mother dies, when he exacts the price for that from her precious orphanage, when he holds her to him as the pain of it overwhelms her in the same way it had him.

Not in the Fold. Not when he is so close to victory, he can taste her mouth on his. Not when she kills the tracker.

Not when she is nothing.

Not when he is.

And when the last ashes of the body that is not hers wisp away with the ashes of the body that is not his, he watches her altered face from afar and feels a faint, bitter smile brush his mouth.

He has always been an excellent liar.


End file.
